Recording Revolution

   

As luck would have it a tremendous electrical storm wiped out power in the area where my studio is located late Friday night. As of this writiing more than 24 hours later, the power is still out. Gas lines, very edgy drivers (one of which I got out to reprimand for his rude behavior), and extremely warm temperatures made for an interesting evening. I remained indoors until at leat 5:00 and decided then to drive to Guitar Center to look at studio monitors. I badly need good reference speakers for my work with protools software. 

I have become addicted to recording, editing, and mixing music. It's a fascinating process where one learns the real in's and out's of how recordings are put together in the modern digital age. The shortcuts and quality of sound are nothing less than incredible. 

   

Beyond that though are the natural questions that come to mind:

What will become of recording studios if its possible (which it is) to record from home with high quality and major convienience. Now this assumes that the individual comes to terms with a very step and time consuming learning curve.

What cost savings will be had once musicians can literally e-mail music files anywhere in the world? I did just that today sending two collaborations to Italy. About a month ago I finished and sent one off to Holland. 

Will isolation take over with musicians no longer having to relate face to face with each other on collaborative efforts? Well, that's a stretch until you consider the time involved and the fact that you are not relating directly to a live musician in the same room. 

Isn't it always that "The Sky Is Falling" mentality takes over when advances in technology are made? Of course it is. In the end, digital is still digital. Analog sounds better but is clumbsy and laborous. Digital is clean and quick but tends to sound sterile if you overload your music with software instrumentation. 

I had the pleasure of hosting a former student of mine at my studio over the last week. Zikay is an amazing musician who is a wizard with the synth and is in love with digital technology. A very telling moment occured during a playback of one of his works. I began to improvise over the track...suddenly Zikay stopped the music and exclaimed, "Wow, that's sounds great!" "It's not digital!" Even he could hear the difference.

So all this is to say, don't worry, join the revolution going on in recording and use technology to advance your music. In the end, you really have no choice do you?